


the thunder speaks for the sky

by orphan_account



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Kissing, M/M, Neighbors
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-21
Updated: 2019-10-21
Packaged: 2020-12-27 16:23:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,616
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21121748
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Jeno’s always been too much: too kind, too handsome, too good a kisser, and Renjun’s always been overwhelmed. Opposites attract, but this is a combination for the stars. Gravity will tear them to shreds.





	the thunder speaks for the sky

**Author's Note:**

> > i know this is a mess, but it's my mess, so  
> please let me know your thoughts ! ! ♡__♡

When the boys next door refuse to kiss him, Renjun takes out the brushes he hides in his socks and the oils he keeps with the toothpaste, and he paints. He always paints the same thing—the boys next door, the ones who refuse to kiss him—but he makes their hair blue. And their eyes green. And their lips pink. Too pink, sometimes. It makes Renjun want to kiss them.

But kissing boys doesn’t pay the bills. He wishes it did, and then he’d kiss boys all day, even though his father says that kissing boys is for girls, just like painting, and just like the boots he bought from the shop down the road, the ones with silver aglets and scuffs on the ankle like someone played footsie with the sidewalk. 

So when Renjun doesn’t kiss boys or paint, he rides his bike. That doesn’t pay bills either, but throwing newspapers at houses just before dawn  _ does, _ apparently. Renjun can’t understand it. 

Every morning, he gets out his bike, picks up a stack of papers, and throws them at the neighbours cat—the one with the hand-knit sweaters and eye smiles and lips as soft as watercolour. The  _ neighbour,  _ not the cat, of course. Renjun’s not weird. He kisses the cat on the  _ forehead, _ between the ears, and the cat slowly closes its eyes into crescents and slinks off with its back arched like an accordion. Purrs like one, too. Renjun wonders if there’s money in that. 

Some days, the cat watches him from the window of one of the bedrooms. Two wide eyes, black as coal, warm as winter fire. Smiles like one of Renjun’s boys. On those days, Renjun doesn’t throw the newspaper. He folds it neatly and slides it into the post box. 

_ Black cats are dangerous,  _ his father had told him once,  _ just like girls, and guns, and girls who know guns.  _

Renjun thinks he likes black cats best. He tries to paint them when he gets bored of boys, but he can never quite mix the black right. So, he sticks with his boys. Boys with green hair, boys with blue. Boys with their tongues out and boys with their tongues in other boy’s mouths. 

“Would you let me stick my tongue in your mouth?” Renjun asks the boy next door one day—the one with the cat and knit sweaters and lips like summer. His name’s Jeno, Jeno Lee, but Renjun doesn’t like thinking about names. They don’t make sense most of the time. 

Jeno wrinkles his nose and shoves his hands in the kangaroo pouch of his sweater. 

They’ve only kissed twice: once on the nose when Renjun was too busy thinking about boys and biked into Jeno who had been standing with his head in the clouds, and again on the lips,  _ just  _ the lips, no tongue, no teeth.

“Why would you want to?” Jeno asks. It’s not a no. 

Renjun crawls onto Jeno’s lap and threads his fingers through his hair, tightens his grip, and angles Jeno’s head back. His adam’s apple bobs like it’s trying to escape. Water-surface tension. Renjun traces the shape of it with his finger. 

“Because it’s kind of gross,” Renjun says. “And kind of fun. And kind of hot, too.” 

Jeno is still as Renjun pulls his hold on Jeno’s hair even tighter in the way that makes Jeno bare his neck and whine. Vulnerable, his eyes flutter shut. At Renjun’s mercy. Something dark curls through him as he bends down to mouth at the dip of Jeno’s neck. 

The last time they did this, Jeno couldn’t help himself. He’d grabbed Renjun by the waist and flipped them over, strong arms and strong hands and strong body. But now, he’s still. Trembling with the effort to contain himself, but still. He knows Renjun likes him like that. 

There’s money in this, Renjun thinks as he licks a stripe up Jeno’s neck. Money in strength and wisdom and the thunder thrum of Jeno’s pulse under his lips. A picture’s worth a thousand words, but Jeno,  _ Jeno  _ with his lips freshly bruised and spit-slicked, is the picture of pleasure, and that’s worth more than words. Renjun knows. He sticks his hands down his pants every night and paints it in his mind. 

But it’s never quite the same. Never as real as having the actual boy under you, never as real as feeling how solid he is, how he preens at your touch and curls into your side. 

Renjun rolls off Jeno’s lap to reach over and steal a pencil from his desk. 

“What are you doing?” Jeno asks as Renjun rips a page from one of the newspapers. Something about money, about stocks and shares and the economy. Things that matter. Renjun knows because there are graphs, and there are _always_ graphs for things that matter. It doesn’t matter to _Renjun, _though, so he picks up his pencil and starts sketching.

The swell of Jeno’s lips over tomorrow’s dollar forecast. What’s the weather like? Renjun’s feeling a bit hot under collar. 

He almost snaps the pencil out of frustration. There’s too much to draw. 

Jeno’s always been too much: too kind, too handsome, too good a kisser, and Renjun’s always been overwhelmed. Opposites attract, but this is a combination for the stars. Gravity will tear them to shreds. 

Jeno shifts, then, slightly in the way that carves shadows against his cheekbones and sculpts him into something he’s not. Something beautiful but unearthly, and  _ fuck—  _ He’s ruined Renjun’s drawing. Somehow, he can’t find it in himself to be upset. He simply draws again, a new Jeno over the old. 

He starts again with his lips and the way they cheekily curl up at the corners, and then he moves on to his neck, thick corded muscle that aches for Renjun to wrap his hands around. His fingers twitch with the need. Jeno notices, and he smiles. It’s too much, earth-shattering. Fault lines run through his sketch. He crumples it in his hand and tosses it to the side. 

“But you put so much effort into that,” Jeno whines. He reaches over and picks it up off the floor to unfurl it and smooth out the creases, but it’s ruined, now. Wrinkled and old and useless. Even so, he holds it close to his heart and smiles like it’s something precious. 

Renjun can’t understand it, the way Jeno does that: takes broken things and makes them kind. It makes him think about war and anger and black holes and his father. If Jeno’s touch could fix them all.

It makes him think about himself, about the first time they met, Renjun thinking about boys and Jeno with his head in the clouds, so far out of orbit the radio signals fizzled out halfway to his brain. There’s always been a disconnect. A great distance between them and the world they inhabit. Something that boys and bandaids and Jeno’s kisses can’t fix.

But it doesn’t stop them from trying.

“Are you going to let me walk you home?” Jeno asks, leaning against the wall as he watches Renjun lace up his shoes. Two bunny-eared loops crossed over and pulled through. Voilà.

Jeno always asks, and Renjun always says no. He dusts off his hands and stands to face Jeno. His face is cast gold in the dying summer light. 

“I live just down the road,” is his reply, but Jeno doesn’t seem bothered. He reaches through the space between them and takes Renjun’s hand between his own. It’s so soft, Renjun thinks. Jeno laces their fingers together. It’s too intimate. 

“I don’t mind,” Jeno says. 

Renjun frowns. “But I biked here.”

Jeno curls in on himself like a hedgehog—no spikes, just shy. Always shy. “You don’t want me to walk you home, do you?” 

He says it with a smile, but Renjun can hear the hurt in his voice. It feels like static, like distance. Fingers laced but falling through like water. Renjun squeezes them tighter. 

“I do,” he blurts out, and Jeno’s eyes widen. Renjun looks away. He’s not sure what it is, but there’s a lump in his throat, as though he has to force out every word. “You can, uh— You can ride on the back.”

Jeno brushes his thumb over the back of Renjun’s hand.  _ Too intimate.  _ It leaves a trail of fire in its wake. 

Renjun looks up. Jeno’s smile is soft and small, and it feels like a secret, like something reserved for Renjun and only for Renjun. He leans forward and kisses it quiet.

The bike is his mother’s. Renjun finds it in a sepia-stained photograph tucked away deep in his father’s sock drawer, and there’s rust on the handlebars and the chain groans when they cycle too fast, but it’s strong enough to bear both their weight when Jeno hops on the back and circles his arms around Renjun’s waist. Jeno tucks his face in the crook of Renjun’s neck, glutting all of his bone-breaking weight on Renjun’s back.

He wonders if this is what Atlas felt like with the weight of the world on his shoulders. He wonders if they can always be this close. If, when they reach Renjun’s house, Jeno will kiss him, once on the lips, and then again on the forehead between the eyes.

Wonders if his father will be waiting for him there by the gate, or inside with a cup of coffee and a gun. Or will he be somewhere else, somewhere unreachable and glazed over with suburban wildfire? The uncertainty settles something heavy in the pit of his stomach. 

Renjun knows fear. This isn’t it.

It’s change. 


End file.
